The Vatican suffered a blow to its efforts to have its bank included in the European "white list" of states that comply with international standards against tax fraud and money laundering on Monday when JP Morgan Chase shut the account of the Vatican bank at an Italian branch.

Italian police said on Friday announced they had seized about $6 trillion worth of fake U.S. Treasury bonds, worth roughly a third of the entire U.S. national debt that, if released into the worldwide financial system, could potentially have caused serious disruptions.

Mohammed El-Erian, head of PIMCO, the largest bond fund in the world, said in a Sunday interview that the European Union (EU) must change its approach to the Greek debt crisis or risk spending billions for nothing.